Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Anyway heres the trailer for Son of Rambow, a story about two British (maybe Irish) kids attempt to remake Rambo and it looks cute to all get out (which I think is an expression and not just something I mangled)

Adorable, right?Well when I saw that on BWE, seeing that trailer about children trying to remake a movie I was immediately reminded of an amazing true story about 3 12 year old friends in Mississippi who decided to make a shot by shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark and over the course of their teenage years they pulled it off! It’s amazing (and so amazing that I think someone is making a movie about these kids trying to make a movie about another movie- so meta)Raiders of the Lost BackyardHere’s the articles opening just to whet your apetitite because if you don’t know about it it is such an amazing story about so much, growing up, growing apart, the things that hold us together, youthful dreams and devotions, friendship... and some other jazz

Chris Strompolos was a rowdy, pudgy kid who craved attention. He once bit a classmate, and he had a habit of barking at his teachers, which didn’t go over very well at the Episcopal schools he attended in southern Mississippi. In their efforts to get him to behave, teachers made Chris sit on his hands, copy pages from the Bible, and stay in a dark room for hours by himself. On one occasion, Chris recalls, he even got paddled in front of his classmates. More and more, he drifted into a fantasy world—the world of his favorite movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Ever since seeing it in the summer of 1981, he had idolized the film’s hero, the swashbuckling archaeologist Indiana Jones. Chris loved Indiana Jones. He wanted to be Indiana Jones. Cracking the bullwhip. Rescuing the girl. Making wisecracks all the while. Whenever he could, Chris slipped into the swampy woods near his hometown of Gulfport, and he swung from vines and pretended to be Indy in a world of adventure far from the awful reality (whap) he had to endure (whap) as that wooden paddle smacked his behind (whap).

When he wasn’t playing Indiana Jones, Chris often pored over his Raiders of the Lost Ark comic book. It was a good way to pass the time during the hour-long school-bus rides. One day on the bus, the 10-year-old Chris showed his prized comic book to a skinny older boy, a sixth-grader named Eric Zala, who was known in school as a comic-book collector and talented graphic artist. Eric, 11, seemed impressed. It turned out he was a Raiders fan, too.

During a school assembly that spring, Chris noticed Eric again: he was up on the screen, playing a Gestapo-type villain in a super-8 movie made by a group of sixth-graders under a teacher’s supervision. Chris loved every minute of it—and it wasn’t lost on him that Eric had modeled his character after Toht, the sadistic Nazi from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

After the school year was over, in June of 1982, Chris called Eric. He had an idea. Eric was surprised to be hearing from a kid he barely knew, but invited Chris over to his house anyway.

What ensued was halfway between a playdate and a Hollywood pitch meeting. The two boys sat in Eric’s damp basement, listening to a sound-effects record and brainstorming about doing their own shot-for-shot remake of the movie they loved. Chris planned to play Indiana Jones. Eric said he would take the Toht role.

For most kids, an afternoon spent daydreaming out loud about taking on some grand project would have been enough. But for Chris and Eric, it was just the beginning. As partners, they would prove to be strangely suited to the huge task they had begun. And so their little undertaking became something that occupied them for the rest of the 1980s.

While countless American kids spent the Reagan years numbing their brains with the new adolescent crazes of cable-TV channel surfing and cramming for the S.A.T.’s, Eric and Chris were routinely pulling all-nighters to run lines of dialogue, hammer sets, and make stuff explode. Other boys asked for toys; they asked for props and supplies—a bullwhip, a leather jacket, six cans of spray paint, a VHS camcorder (which Chris got for his birthday one year). Eventually, their project would grow into something big enough to devour their teenage years, but their goal still seemed out of reach even when they had deep voices and girlfriends, with both of them burned out and practically hating each other’s guts. And even 21 years past their start date, when Chris and Eric were finally and absolutely through with each other, their insane project would bring them together once again.